fncslothouber's comments

and usually also far less bloated

Yup, for fun. Building a game from scratch almost from from the bottom. Starting with a CPU, sound-chip and graphics-chip (using an FPGA). On top of that a Forth system and on top of that a platform game. Lots of fun and a great learning experience.

Forth would also be a nice choice.

Give you another example. A watch, not an apple watch, but a simple Casio watch. One that does time, alarm and a stopwatch. Not connected to anything. What is important here is the battery life, so the less code the better. C would be a fine choice here. All additional code to prevent security breaches would be a complete waste here.

Give another example. As my day-job I develop embedded software for the railways. Current system I work on operates the brakes when the train goes too fast. Not connected to the internet, and no connection would even be allowed. Written in C. One because it is simple to understand and the developer can focus on getting the functionality correct. Secondly because there is a wide choice of additional tooling and standards that is required to get the application certified.

Not everything is or needs to be connected to the Internet.

There are plenty of things that are controlled by a micro controllers that do not have a network connection.

Memory safety / security is important for a subset of all possible applications. It is not important for _all_ applications.

If I use a micro controller to control a string of leds I do not care about security/memory safety. But I do care about being as close to the metal as possible, and being able to understand the compiled code.

Both are used extensively in the IT systems that operate most of the Dutch railways.